


Fate's Bitch

by Goethicite



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Eating Disorders, F/M, Historical, Implied Torture, Rape/Non-con References, Violence, War Crimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-21
Updated: 2012-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-21 21:32:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/602296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goethicite/pseuds/Goethicite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snippets of the life of a former Soviet assassin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Our Better Angels are Liars

**Author's Note:**

> Be warned, here be the occasional, gruesome burst of historical accuracy and a myriad of psychological issues and trigger warnings. Seriously, woman in a military experiment in Soviet Russia warnings. I am fairly sure I can't warn enough. Much like Grave Breach, these aren't nice stories.

This is what happens when you break open a woman and spread her pieces on the floor. Women are people too you see. They bleed the same red as the walls of the room. Their screams don't sound any different than the screams of a man with his guts ripped out, if only slightly higher in pitch.

They made a monster, because that was what the little, red-headed girl was already. Post-war Soviet Union allowed for little else but monsters. She was Ukrainian, with big green eyes and the hungry red mouth of the starving. They burned her mother alive because the daughter was too slow to get away without being seen. Years are relative when you only live for missions.

She was young when they tied her down and let a man sweat and groan as he shove into her body. She was silent until they let her go. She screamed when she broke his face then his neck. It hurts is what she learned. It aches and burns and feels like worms in your gut. They call Winter Solider her lover, but that's not quite right. He kissed her. He held her, but he never had her. Had was for missions. Love is for children.

She does as she's told with a smile. They paint her mouth red. It helps. There's no justice for a on orphan of Stalin's private wars. There's no hope for pretty girls with broken eyes. She eats like the famine never ended and dances like her mind's as gone as the rest of her. Maybe it is.

She bleeds calories from gut wounds and blood from the corners of her eyes. She dances for the Winter Soldier, and they break her legs. She gets back up and dances for her masters. They take her tongue out of her head and put it back together wrong when they replace it. They tell her love lies. She's wise enough not to call them liars in return.

She dreams of blondes with icy pale eyes when she aches right before she bleeds. They call him 'Hawkeye'. She calls them liars because men are. He doesn't lie though. He makes his oatmeal with cream and his coffee with sugar, an American through and through. She eats because stupid never described her. She eats until she feels sick, and he empties his bowl into hers when she asks for more.

She doesn't love him. The lessons was well learned. Love is for children praying in the dark. This, his mouth on her stomach, his body beneath her, is for the woman she sometimes wants to be. She takes from him what they tried to burn out of her with a smile. There's only one problem, a disconnect which should make her feel guiltier than it does. Wants isn't the same as being. He never protests when she shoves him away. It's not in his nature to take anything, only to give. He doesn't fight the inclination but defiantly embraces it at any cost to himself. It's beautiful and heart-rending and perfect. They're a match made in hell. Everyone knows the secret to why. There's a emptiness in Natasha, an unfillable void, that she was born with, and she likes it that way.


	2. The Story Began in a Graveyard

Once upon a time, there was a Russian soldier who whispered sweet nothings into the ear of a Ukrainian girl on a kolkhozy. He liked her pretty, red hair, and she liked his silver tongue and bright green eyes. He went off to fight with (not against, this was the early years) the Germans and die in the snow with his guts steaming the air above him. The girl had a daughter with the soldier's eyes and hair the color of fresh blood.

Once upon a time, there was a famine in the USSR. It was after the war. Some say Stalin did it on purpose. Some say it was incompetence. Whatever you believe, know this, after the Second World War Ukraine /starved/. Not like the Black Famine (or so Russian historians claim), but Ukraine was considered to be nationalistic and uncooperative. Who really knows? After all, no one was allowed to talk about it until long after the dead had rotted.

This little girl was born at the height of war. She walked on thin, malnourished legs just in time to find out her belly could shrink even further. She toddled when she slit a soldier's throat for a scrap of bread. Her mother was to busy dying to feed the girl. So the girl fed herself. There were soldiers everywhere to keep the people from leaving or taking grain that was slated for the capitol. Some walked into the bullets, because it was quicker than the hunger.

Eventually those same soldiers saw the girl's blood red hair and made the connection. They burned her mother, too weak to move, trying to get the girl. She was captured when she ran towards her mother's dying screams. If a certain man, with a certain idea, hadn't been passing through that day, the girl would have been raped, tortured, and tossed into the pile of bodies gathering outside the town to be burned. People were too weak to bury the dead.

That man is the first of many who will smile at that girl. After all, she's beautiful, clever, and so hungry. And hungry people will do anything for a scrap of dry bread, a silver of salted meat, or a sip of unspoiled milk. She trusts that smile. It's a child's mistake, but she's just a child and doesn't know that yet. She'll learn.

There are may names for the project. There are many women, and some men, who passed through it. None are as good as the first two though. No one is as good as the second. Her government file says she joined at age six, because even Soviet era politically active scientist were uncomfortable with the thought of torturing a four year old. This didn't stop them from cutting her open and experimenting with a body young enough to heal from it until they come up with a formula that works.

Hawkeye tells her he's fate's bitch. He says it with a smile, but his eyes are icy and empty. Though she's learning that the eyes has nothing to do with the man. His eyes lie for him with the color of the Siberian sky in winter. It's a clever disguise. She fell for it at first too. She likes that phrase as well, 'fate's bitch'. He says it as he fills her plate full of fresh fruit and cheese toast with a small pile of peppery ham on top. It's his reason for being recruited into SHIELD. It'll be hers too.

Natasha is fate's bitch. She likes it that way. Her code name is the Black Widow. Clint, the name she prefers for her Hawkeye, affectionately calls her Karma. He still makes her food even though he's already won her over. She's better now, a little, about not eating herself sick or sicking back up what she ate to keep off the extra weight. Clint goes with her to the SHIELD nutritionist on the bad days. Those are fewer and farther between as time passes, and Clint always makes sure there's something to eat when she's hungry. He never mistakes her past for a weakness. It's why the people he let's hurt him for the mission always come to a messy end. Fate's a bitch after all, and she's rather fond of bitches doing the dirty work for her.


End file.
